Now, many cancers in early stages can be treated at our Cancer Institute. - Harriet Mayanja-Kizza

HIV before the year 1996, we had no ARVs in Uganda. People were dying. Among the people who died was my cousin. She was brought to me in Mulago, I was a physician then. She had HIV, and she had severe pneumonia. We gave her all kinds of antibiotics, we gave her amoxicillin, etc. The girl didn’t survive. She passed on. A couple of years later, we discovered through work done in Uganda that this pneumonia the girl had, was due to an organism, now called PJP, and overtime as research was done in Uganda, we found or confirmed that a simple drug like Septrin could have saved my cousin.

It looks like a small change, but it’s a big change. Who wants to take tablets for six months? Wouldn’t you rather take them for four months? But that is still not enough. We are looking at how we can shorten it even further. In fact, we are competing with our colleagues in HIV care. We say people in HIV care only started their work yesterday, but now, they are doing test and treat.

We started looking at HIV and TB interaction, and discovered some of the mechanisms of this interaction.